Embrace the dark side.

Yeah, I’ll own it: I’m a reality TV junkie.

For the most part, I think I have pretty sophisticated — if tremendously personal — taste in entertainment. My top 100 films list has been meticulously crafted and recrafted. My CD collection can beat up your CD collection. I turn up my nose at pop radio and listen to NPR and classical; I watch BBC World news almost every night. I also have a low tolerance for human stupidity and a well-developed code of ethics.¹

(¹ lol.)

But I’ll willingly suspend all that to spend an hour or two having a good, cheap laugh at others’ expense watching Beauty and the Geek, Hit Me Baby One More Time, Welcome to the Neighborhood &c &c. Summer programming is no wasteland in this household, friends; for three months, I’m an unembarrassed lowbrow.

But the real obsession is Dancing with the Stars. How can I express my undying passion for clumsy ‘celebrities’ earnestly honing their ballroom skills? On the surface, (and possibly also in execution) it’s the lamest concept for a 6-week series in the short but glorious history of competitive reality TV. But what can I say? It taps into the part of me that worshipped Torvill & Dean for years as an adolescent and compelled me to seek out streets named after them just one year ago. It’s why I can’t condemn last year’s unimaginative Shall We Dance? I love the dance, I love celebrities, and I love DWTS!

Still, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be quite so hooked if it weren’t for the show’s breakout stud and ballroom natural: yes, Seinfeld’s J Peterman himself, John O’Hurley. Oh come on. If you don’t know my odd taste in men by now! I’m utterly charmed by him and his gorgeous Danish partner, Charlotte Jorgensen. They’re adorable, and there’s obvious warmth between them that makes them so much fun to watch. And it’s so endearing how seriously he takes it. Yes, I would have been crushed if my silver-haired twinkletoes had been offed tonight, but happily the pair will advance to next week’s final!

Vote John & Charlotte. Vote early and vote often.

So I’m in love with a celebrity dance couple. I’ve been in love with stranger things before.

Am also a huge fan of Jay Leno’s headlines — I prefer Letterman with a ferocity that is unwarranted considering my custom is to watch no late-night talk shows whatsoever; comparable, I suppose, to the very serious pop-vs-soda debate that really couldn’t possibly matter less. Headlines, though. They slay me.

A few of tonight’s highlights:

Crack quality drops in Erie
Lost: male cat. deaf. answers to Spike.
[safety tips] Do not leave strangers in your vehicle.
For sale: misc wedding equp — helmets, rods, etc.
Wanted: afterprom cmte looking for king sized mattress.

Oh holy man there is an online archive. I’ll be busy for a while.

But otherwise. I am sooo sophisticated. You know it’s true.

Still I think I’m doing fine.

Somehow summer is passing with no real sense of urgency on my part, no doomed feelings of failure or optimistic plans for future accomplishment. I realize I have set quite a lot in motion this past month or so, but I’m numb to it all — static as lives bounce causing and effecting around me, some integral part but no participant.

I’m all business these days, and though my deepest fear is that I’m becoming less articulate and thought-full by the hour, I’ve become quite capable of making plans, asking the right questions, navigating unfamiliar cities, and eventually, I have no doubt, signing a lease and all that. I haven’t gotten around to finding a job, but that’s more laziness than incompetence now. Yes, I think I could really take to this adulthood thing, except I’m utterly lacking in motivation.

See, Cleveland has become business to me, and while I’m sure it will be exactly what I need it to be when it happens, for now it’s a series of things to attend to — still, true, there is the thought of what it will eventually be like to motivate me. Apart from that? No drive, no follow-through. In Marietta, it seemed like motivation abounded — there were reasons to stay up late with friends, to really work at a paper, to put so much time, thought and care into what was after all just a work-study job. I don’t do things for themselves and I don’t do them for any personal gain, direct or indirect: there’s always some outside motivation, and despite my inveterate selfishness, it usually has to do with another person.

More weeks than I care to count into summer vacation, I am utterly cut off from all the people who once motivated me, whose love and support and company made doing anything worthwhile. No amount of taking care of business is going to make up for this complete lack of companionship and mutual understanding.

So, yes, I have everything in order, and I’m fully prepared for things upcoming. In every day-to-day matter, I’m doing fine — you’d think I’m doing fine. This is how you learn what you value. Right? This is how you learn what you can and cannot forsake.

This isn’t all about transition and resistance to change. This is actual not-myself-ness. I feel so solitary and self-sufficient, yet I’m defined by whom I love. Some connections are severed and some are rather murky, and I feel at sea — yet absolutely stable, as I’ve said, in every noticeable respect.

This entry really got away from me and I’m not at all sure what I was trying to say.

That sounds about right.

Wanted: unparalleled snap-decision maker with a skewed sense of duty.

‘So I’d best be off to bed,’ said I at 10:30 pm. An hour which would have given me only 5 1/2 hours of sleep had I fallen asleep immediately, but I know from a month’s experience I cannot fall asleep any earlier than that, no matter what ungodly hour my alarm is set for. So I tried to sleep. No luck. Hoped a bit of Victorian poetry would do the trick. Nope. For the past 4 1/2 hours I have moved from my bed to one couch to the other, rolled over into every conceivable sleeping position, took my clothes off and put them back on, tried the TV, tried classical music, tried silence, and still I’m desperately awake. 3am, alarm is supposed to go off in one hour, and sleep does not appear forthcoming.

I haven’t slept in a week, actually. Four 4am mornings in a row preceded by an average of two hours of sleep each and I was dead tired, twitchy and incoherent, but still couldn’t sleep, so I called off work Friday. Recovered sleeping in today and hoped the problem was solved, but here I am again.

So what do I do? I act decisively, rashly and self-destructively: I just called in not only to call off, but to quit my job.

Crap.

In many ways, it was the perfect job — $9.10/hr, flexible schedule, could continue work in the fall, easy tasks, varied locations, mostly solitary environment.

But for all that, I feel like I’m dying and they keep sending me to locations an hour or more away for jobs that last three or four hours, so by the time I subtract gas and often highway tolls, I’m making less than minimum wage.

So, bah, I’m through.

Which I’m not exactly in a position to be considering my plans for the fall, but I am. I can’t drive to Avon on no sleep, and I won’t call off again — I’ll be absolutely reliable or absolutely a quitter, but I won’t be a lameass lazy moron the boss can only depend on 50% of the time.

Right. So. Back to the couch to try to sleep eventually, then a hopefully non-judgmental father’s day, then straight to the want ads and a temp office Monday morning.

I have as little use for this information as you do, believe me.

Random facts culled from my needlessly elaborate web server statistics:

• Busiest year: 2005, haha
• Busiest month: April 2005
• Busiest day: Wednesday, and the last half of the week as a rule
• However, this month: Tuesday is saying eat my dust.
• Busiest hour: 10pm just barely beating out the noon hour
• And this month: 9am and 5pm, by a long shot. Odd.
• Majority file size: between 1 and 10kb. (uninteresting, but still surprising, because:)
• Majority file type accessed: jpgs
• The vaaaast majority of my referrals come from: asexuality.org
• The vaaaast majority of my search queries involve: Gilmore Girls
• Number of interesting search queries: zero (which is a huge bummer because it’s the only real reason to check your stat report)
• Only marginally interesting search query: the crying game diversity issues
• Surprising browser revelation: A lot of people use firefox. I have no idea what my site looks like on firefox. I should find out what my site looks like on firefox. (have absolutely no interest in meeting the needs of Netscape users.)

I can’t believe I just typed that nonsense at 3am when I am desperately tired. Bed. (By which I mean couch.)

(Do I have regular readers using firefox? Why don’t you just tell me what my site looks like in firefox? Realizing it looks like crap generally.)

Oh, hey, this one’s better.

(Began this yesterday when I was still pessimistic about writing at length on any real subject ever again — might as well finish it now, but you can scroll down for something marginally worth reading.)

Momentary amusement copied from Miranda, because it seems lately I have nothing to say unless directly asked. So more surveyfun.

SEVEN THINGS YOU LOVE
– Funny errors that result from poor grammar, spelling and diction, such as the classic church bulletin bloopers
– OCD-light organization — manilla folders for four years of notes, endlessly categorized and sub-categorized books and cds, lists of favorite movies &c
– Highly autobiographical literature and published diaries and letters
– Fresca! I bet there’s a good cocktail in that… vodka & Fresca maybe…
– Pillows, lots of pillows, can’t sleep without three of ‘em, need a body pillow
– Conversation with a capital C.
– Feeling helpful — almost to the point of pathology.

SEVEN THINGS YOU HATE
– Poor grammar, spelling and diction when the result is in no way amusing.
– Asterisks that lead nowhere.
– “I could care less” AAAAAAAAARGH!
– Gas prices.
– Children.
– Absolute refusal to think outside of one’s parents’ worldview… and then complaining about one’s parents’ worldview.
– Ohio summer heat grossness.

SEVEN RANDOM FACTS ABOUT YOU
– I prefer my feet uncovered, but otherwise Diane Keaton is my fashion role model.
– I still have quite the list of celebrity crushes.
– Speaking of my love for older (especially British) men and women might make the casual reader doubt my asexuality.
– But whatever, because labels blah. I’m very happy to finally be free of absolutes of any kind.
– I’m through with popular radio and now all I’ll listen to is NPR and classical.
– I would love to spend a few years living in New York and London. Actually, I can see myself spending the last years of my life about 30 min outside London.
– I’m teaching myself French from a book published in 1919 — all the dialogues are about the war, which is interesting… and I think I’m progressing well. It’s very important to me to be bilingual.

SEVEN THINGS YOU DO WELL
– I write papers well, but I have little confidence in anything else. I would like to say I write well.
– I’m awesome at Minesweeper, Snake and FreeCell.
– Word games like Boggle — headstrong, I’ll take on anyone! hahaha, oh.
– Carsinging. Which is not to say I’m a good singer. Very different art forms.
– Remembering useless knowledge — for example, I will probably never forget the entire cast of One Life to Live circa 1998.
– Beginning insane projects
– Knitting your basic garter stitch

SEVEN THINGS YOU DON’T DO WELL
– Dancing, yes. Or aerobic exercise or anything that demands a small amount of grace.
– I’m not very thoughtful — actually I’m a pretty crap friend when it comes down to it.
– Talking on the telephone.
– Keeping in touch in any way — I’m likely to drop relationships when direct contact abates… I hate this about myself.
– Small talk
– Driving in reverse
– Remembering birthdays and anniversaries

SEVEN FAVORITE SONGS
– “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” Crosby Stills Nash (& sometimes) Young (if you ask me the impossible question — what is your favorite song? — I’ll usually fall back on this one)
– Max Sedgley’s remix of Sarah Vaughan doing “Peter Gunn” — currently a bit obsessed with this one
– “Lilac Wine” Nina Simone or Jeff Buckley, it does not matter
– “Sometimes” Beatles
– “Fakin’ It” Simon & Garfunkel
– “Hospital Bed” Ben Kweller
– “Layla” (original version) Derek & the Dominos

SEVEN ALBUMS YOU COULDN’T LIVE WITHOUT
– I’m With Stupid Aimee Mann
– Whatever & Ever Amen Ben Folds Five
– No One is Really Beautiful Jude
– Revolver Beatles
– Sounds of Silence Simon & Garfunkel
– Try Whistling This Neil Finn
– Rumours Fleetwood Mac

SEVEN FAVORITE BOOKS (I’ll pick 7 other than the ones listed below)
– Mrs Dalloway Virginia Woolf
– Maurice EM Forster
– The House of Mirth Edith Wharton
– The Bell Jar Sylvia Plath
– All the Harry Potters! 3,5,4,1,2 in order
– The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas Gertrude Stein
– No Signposts in the Sea Vita Sackville-West — for though not great literature in any sense, the personal conclusions she reaches move me…

SEVEN FAVORITE POEMS
– All of Crimes Against Nature and S/HE by Minnie Bruce Pratt… perhaps the only poet I’ve read in real depth
– Ariel Sylvia Plath
– “Diving into the Wreck” Adrienne Rich, and so many others
– A Few Figs From Thistles, Edna St Vincent Millay (I am most faithless when I most am true…)
– “Dead Woman” Pablo Neruda (yes, mostly because of Truly, Madly, Deeply — lame, lame)
– “The North Ship” Philip Larkin (when I get around to it I’m sure much of his poetry is better, but a few lines quoted below meant quite a lot a few weeks ago.)
– “Coal” Audre Lorde

SEVEN FAVORITE MOVIES (in order)
– Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
– The Royal Tenenbaums
– All About Eve
– The Philadelphia Story
– Manhattan
– The Lion in Winter
– Bringing Up Baby

SEVEN FAVORITE FICTIONAL CHARACTERS
– Lily Briscoe in Woolf’s To the Lighthouse — the only true asexual I’ve found in literature
– Esther Greenwood in Plath’s The Bell Jar, oh yes
– Beatrice in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing — for the first half of the play, we are of one mind
– Woolf’s eponymous Orlando — as I say, I love auto/biographical literature
– There will always be a place in my heart for 80s sitcom feministas — Murphy Brown, Julia Sugarbaker, Dorothy Zbornak
– Just at the moment? Emily Gilmore… oh, I’m a loser.
– Severus Snape, Sirius Black…

The best of what’s around.

Turns out, not where but who you’re with that really matters
And hurts not much when you’re around
(Good old school DMB, making more sense tonight than ever)

I haven’t felt so fulfilled, in control, content — so much myself — in weeks. Still I’m not sure I can carry the thoughts over into words expressed in what has become a very daunting little textbox, but the feeling thankfully remains. Oh, to be understood. To be freakish but not alone in one’s freakishness. To not feel guilty for needing what one needs — and to know, absolutely know, what one needs. Coffee, a best friend, and Conversation — that is all to me, but I don’t feel like I’m asking too much.

Yes I want a life others do not want. And others may see this life as something between silly and grotesque, but it’s the life for me and I know how to create it. After four weeks in this holding pattern I start to panic, reconsider — am I selfish? am I wrong? The truth is I don’t ask for a lot, but I am specific. My pleasures are simple, but they are just so. I am an all-or-nothing person, but I know how to get the all and I can, actually, live with the ‘nothing.’

Whatever distorted outward appearance I show that leads people to describe me as ‘fragile,’ I am entirely self-sufficient — friends, I spent five months living alone in a foreign country in which I did not speak the national language. I will be fine even in the worst-case scenario — and on top of ‘fine’ I will always have my books. And on top of that I will likely have a job that pays for minor extravagances — again, I’m very simple. But when it comes down to it, the hypothetical choice that made me physically sick earlier today seems so obvious now: if I had to choose between career and company, the latter would weigh much more heavily into the decision. I can more than survive anywhere and alone, but I can only really flourish with the perfect understanding I have known with two or three people in my life — and which I have to imagine I will find with many more in ‘the city, any city.’

Yes, I feel good, but increasingly unsatisfied because this is still the writing of another Lauren; I haven’t written properly in over a year though I have grown in that time (what I want is to not speak of growth!) yet my writing remains in this awful plateau. As I said tonight, I need to break out of this pattern. I have something of a voice and I love that, but it has deteriorated into a formula —

and I’m tired, tired of absolutes. All my life I’ve needed some absolute good to grasp, though every thing I reached for felt inauthentic. As a young teen it was God, and oh how I tried to be a Christian. Later it was government, and I tried to be a patriot — I needed to believe in the absolute good of America. And then it was blind faith in humanity, in the essential goodness of every human being, and I tried out humanism. Here finally I can say I do not believe in god, there is nothing special about America, and human beings are not essentially anything — I can say all this and not feel the need to reach for something else to cling to. That’s freedom.

But still I do not want to speak of freedom, or evolution, or growth, or potential, or self-awareness, for these are of the old lexicon. And yet, though I need to push myself into something new, I do not want to speak of profound change. The longer I write through this the more it reads like it always has, which is absurd and strangely comforting. I’ll let it be for now.

I’ll let it be. I’ll write through it.

There are these conclusions, but as yet they’re amorphous and synergetic and not quite ready for this forum.

Hey you and me have a better time than most can dream
Have it better than the best, so can pull on through
Whatever tears at us, whatever holds us down
And if nothing can be done, we’ll make the best of what’s around.

A few things that are awesome.

This feels disloyal, but, oh the allure of a survey.

1) Number of DVDs/VHS I own: A paltry 13 DVDs (counting TV box sets as one) and 31 VHS tapes, plus well over 100 tapes of TV from the late 90s…

2)Last one I bought: Hitchcock VHS box set from Record Exchange for $5. Sweet.

3) Last watched From my collection? Um, I guess Dead Again during senior week. Otherwise, um, The Birds? Wow, have I gotten out of my movie fixation.

4) 5 movies that I watch a lot or mean a lot

5 I could watch 5 times a day without getting tired of ‘em — for The Life Cinematic is always there if you want definitive lists.

Bringing Up Baby
Holiday
The Lion in Winter
Les Parapluies de Cherbourg
Much Ado About Nothing

5) Total amount of books I own: I’ve at least doubled my library over the past 4 weeks — it’s up to 278. I’ll double it again by the end of the summer — as if I have a place to put them or a way to ever move them out!

6) Last Book I Read: I’m in the middle of The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas by Gertrude Stein and The Human Stain by Philip Roth.

7) 5 Books That Mean a lot to me :

The Waves Virginia Woolf
The Hours Michael Cunningham
The Little Prince Antoine de St Exupery
The Passion Jeanette Winterson
Wuthering Heights Emily Bronte